Orbotech’s Strategic Decision for End-to-End Partnership Benefits Everyone

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Matties:

Cohen: My background is marketing. I started with an electronic defense company, then I moved to 3M, and joined Orbotech, this industry is fascinating.

Matties: What's the favorite part of your job?

Cohen: Meeting new people, I would say. This industry is amazing, and the show is a great opportunity to meet so many people from so many different facilities, different languages, different cultures, all trying to do one thing, and that's to provide the best service to their customers. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to spend time with those people, and I enjoy every minute of it.

Matties: It is amazing. I've been in this industry for 35 years now. It's hard to believe. So, after one year, what's your general impression about the industry?

Cohen: That it's a very committed industry. People in this industry are in it for the long run. They've done this for years, and they're going to do it for years to come. That's what we do. And it's inspiring to see the relationships. I'm looking at Orbotech people. Most of our engineers, and the Orbotech employees in the West have been with us for more than 15 years. It says a lot about them and about us. And they're still enthusiastic about what they're doing. It's remarkable.

Matties: Part of it though is, when you're in a company that's stagnant, if you will, it’s boring. But Orbotech is constantly innovating. Constantly bringing new concepts, and a friendlier and more partner-oriented strategy. I think that was a welcome change, because our surveys indicated there were a lot of upset people who felt like the only choice was Orbotech, and it was a bittersweet decision kind of thing. I'm glad to hear that you guys are working on that aspect of it.

Cohen: And I can share with you that we see the results and we're getting very positive feedback. I personally receive emails and phone calls from CEOs of companies that are thankful for the change. They see the commitment. They see the different mindset. And it's a change in focus. We’ve always had the people. We’ve always had the technology. I think what we missed was the focus on that aspect, and I'm happy that that's what we're doing today.

Matties: Well, it comes down to the leadership. The leadership has to make that decision to be this type of company.

Cohen: True, but I think it's part of the Orbotech way, because Orbotech’s direction is to work from the design phase to production, to be partners from the beginning of the process until the end of it. To do that, there's no other way but to be better partners. And this is, as we say, the language of electronics. We read, write, and connect, that's what we do. We're everywhere from the beginning to the end, and that's true partnership for us.

Matties: It seems like good things are happening for Orbotech.

Cohen: It is exciting times for Orbotech. We had a fantastic year, by the way. Orbotech, in general, just did very well.

Matties: Let me ask you, getting back to the monitoring center. That got my attention. How does that work? Is it 24-hour monitoring of a process, and you're actually monitoring how effectively the machine is working, how their yields are, and then you're giving them feedback?

Cohen: Not just that. So, for several years, I would say three or four years, we had the ability to look into the history of a machine, into the log files, and see what went wrong. So for instance, a direct imaging machine is able to send a report to a server every night. When there was a problem, for example a drop in efficiency, we used to look back into the log, understand what went wrong, and then come and fix it. That's what we used to do.

What we decided to do different this year in Orbotech West, was to take the data and look at it proactively. Not to wait until something went wrong and only then look at it, but to read the logs all the time on a continuous basis, automatically, based on our proprietary software, and identify problems before they have actual impact in the field. We have people in Boston reviewing the data for all of our customers, all of our machines, that are connected to the service. And that enables us to anticipate reactions, so we can say, "Okay, if X is happening now, then in three or four weeks we should anticipate that Y will happen, so we need to work on that right now." And that's what we're doing.

Matties: So, it becomes predictive.

Cohen: Predictive analytics. That's exactly what it is.

Matties: That's a really valuable service for your customers.

Cohen: I agree. It has tremendous value, and it looks good, too.

Matties: Sharon, thank you so much for spending time with us today. I appreciate it.

Cohen: Thank you very much.

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